The dynamic context of urban and
environmental change has been offered as a theme and entry point to such
recent Oakville Galleries exhibitions as Kim Adams: Bruegel-Boch Bus*;
Roy Arden: Selected Works 1988-2000*; No Man's Land: The Photographs of
Lynne Cohen, Susan Dobson: Sprawl (complemented by an artist in the
community project, Home Truths*; Jeremy Borsos: Then Again* and
Seven Påhlsson: Sprawlville ((March 2004.)*see "past
exhibitions" section of website.

Site Scope explores how the Internet might bridge the content of these
exhibitions to the visual experience outside the walls of Oakville Galleries.
The project, launched at a moment when Oakville is feeling the effects of
urban sprawl, encourages a discovery of what is unique to the town. Site
Scope is informed by the way that the Internet offers a view of maps as
fragmentary, provisional and time-sensitive renditions of a location. Beyond
the screen, the opposite tendency is in effect as communities use visual means
to increasingly regulate and define physical public space. These range from
the modest, such as pedestrian signs, to such comprehensive designs as town
plans.

Beyond the official civic representation of a town there are myriad
overlapping, sometimes interdependent and ever mutating perspectives that
permit individuals or groups to operate with widely different interpretations
of the same place. Site Scope sets out to reveal these as they can be
glimpsed behind the Heritage Zones, the developers' "communities" and the
urban planners' official designs. It brings into question commonly held views
of the town's identity to stimulate ever more vital versions of what Oakville
once was, now is, and could become.

Site Scope was launched this past summer with a map, informed by local
history, that encouraged the self-guided discovery of the estate garden and
its connection to the surrounding built and natural environment. The map
invites visitors to extend the promenade typical to the art gallery or garden
out through the gates and into the neighborhood as a place where, among other
things, lakeshore public access and lakefront seclusion are marked through
subtly delineated boundaries and pathways.

John Bentley Mays in Oakville was the first of what we hope will be a
series of Site Scope residencies. John set out to enrich local debate
on urbanism and architecture and in so doing contribute to the intense
reflection on the evolution of the town. He offered an impressionistic view of
town life as he interpreted it through interviews with a spectrum of its
residents. As well, he provided important background on such major players in
the town's future as urban planner/architect Andrés Duany who, through town
hall meetings, invited local residents into a collective visualization of
Oakville North, a territory of rapid population influx, hyper development,
ecological sensitivity and layered intergovernmental zoning. Further, each
week, one Oakville house was featured in John's weekly The Globe and Mail
column, "The Perfect House." This writing allowed him to inflect his broader
observations on town culture into a more detailed analysis of individual
families and their homes.

John Bentley Mays' investigation combines cultural anthropology, architecture
criticism and social chronicle; did it reveal some important aspects of local
consciousness? It's up to site visitors to say by posting a message on the
electronic
discussion board.